Large Cap Winners & Losers (NVS, CAT, HDB, FBR)

The broader markets are solidly negative, but despite this, there are some large cap stocks that are outperforming today, for a variety of reasons. There are also a handful of stocks that are being hit sharply. Novartis

is up around 5% on news that the company is completing its acquisition of Alcon

at $168.00 per share. There was a note out earlier from MKM Partners that event-driven players will be covering Novartis in the days ahead. HCP

is up around 3% today after the company increased its public offering by 9 million shares and priced its offering at $32.00 per share. It was also upgraded to Buy at Sandler O'Neill and upgraded to Outperform at Robert W. Baird with its price target raised to $37. Caterpillar

is up around 2% on news that its price target was raised to $108 at RBC Capital. Large Caps Losers HDFC Bank Limited (ADR)

is down just under 4%, as the Indian stock market, the Sense, fell 1.2% last night on broad based weakness. Portugal Telecom, SGPS

is down 4.04% after the telecom company was downgraded to Underperform from Market Perform at Bernstein. FBR Capital Markets

is down 3.4% on news it received a downgrade from Buy to Neutral at Goldman Sachs. Visa

is down sharply today, down almost 4%, despite a report from Oppenheimer saying that it believes Visa will be able to navigate the evolving regulatory environment. The Federal Reserve is considering its report on the debit card market and will present its finding tomorrow.